The Seeds of New Earth

by Mark R. Healy

  Negotiating her way through the fragments of glass, she carefully pulled the cabinet to one side and found the edge of a door that had been subtly hidden in the wood panelling of the wall. She eased it aside and stepped through, holding it open for me to follow. As I did, she produced a flashlight and pointed it down the hallway, sweeping it back and forth. There were no windows within and the passageway was dark.

  “There’s a den behind the door down there,” she said, walking forward and indicating another wood-panelled door at the end of the hall. “But that’s not what we’re here for.”

  She kicked aside a large square rug to reveal a hatch in the floor. Bending down, she slipped her fingers under the pull ring and gripped it firmly.

  “What the hell is this, Arsha?”

  She ignored me, instead pulling the hatch open in one fluid movement. It made a wheezing sound as it lifted, and a cluster of wires and machine parts dangled on the underside, clattering noisily.

  “This thing had a pretty serious locking mechanism first time I came here,” Arsha said, shining the flashlight down to reveal ladder rungs and a short drop below. “Took me hours to get it open. One of those mag-lock things. Lucky there was no power to the place, or I’d never have gotten through the electro-seal.”

  She swung adroitly down into the hole and made her way down, waiting for me patiently at the bottom, the flashlight pointed at her feet.

  “You ready?” she said, almost mischievously.

  “Uh, yeah, let’s do it.”

  She brought the flashlight up and stepped inside the vault. It was a rectangular room, approximately six metres long by three metres wide, about the size of an average living room. There was very little free space within, and I almost tripped over something on the floor with the first step I took. Arsha went on ahead, pulling a series of khaki tarpaulins from their fixtures on the wall, allowing them to fall to the floor amid a stream of dust. I steadied myself on the door jamb and looked around, disbelieving.

  “Holy shit,” I muttered.

  “Yeah.”

  The room was filled with an arsenal of weapons unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Every single square centimetre of the wall was covered, and much of the floor was cluttered with a surplus of gear that couldn’t be mounted. There were assault rifles, shotguns, handguns, knives, armoured vests, grenades, smoke canisters, boxes of ammunition. Hundreds of items, way more than I could count, enough here to equip a small army.

  “This guy was preparing to take on the world all by himself by the looks of it,” I said.

  “He was preparing for something, all right.”

  “But he never got to use it.”

  “Seems that way.”

  I reached out for the nearest weapon, a short, pump-action shotgun, very carefully easing it off the rack and running my eye over it. Its metal body glinted amid the swirling dust as Arsha trained the flashlight upon it.

  “So you wanted a gun,” Arsha said. “This is the place to get one.”

  I was no expert on weapons, though I had handled a few during the Summer out of necessity. Looking at the shotgun now, I wasn’t even sure I did want it. I’d never considered guns as a way of solving anything, but in this world where the conflict between Ascension and the Marauders was escalating, it seemed a necessary evil.

  The shotgun looked uncomplicated, and I figured I’d have a better chance of hitting something with it than with a rifle, so I decided to take it.

  “What about you? Are you taking one?”

  Arsha shook her head. “I don’t like guns.”

  I moved along the wall and pulled down several boxes of ammunition, sampling the contents of each until I found shells that slotted into the shotgun’s magazine. I loaded five boxes of shells into my backpack, enough that I would likely never need to come back here, and zipped it up again.

  When I’d finished, I continued along to a rack that was filled with what looked like little brown parcels, all neatly arranged in rows. Curious, I was about to reach out to touch one but stopped suddenly. The letters ‘X7’ were stencilled on the sides of every one of the parcels.

  “Check this out. This must be X7 plastic explosive.”

  Arsha stepped up beside me, peering at the rack. “What’s that?”

  “It’s the most potent kind of explosive you can get. You could blow up half the city with this load.”

  “Okay…” Arsha said nervously. “In that case, I’m ready to leave.”

  “Yeah, we got what we came for. Thank you, Arsha. I appreciate this.”

  “Sure. As long as you’re careful.”

  We fixed the tarpaulins back in place, then headed back toward the ladder. I checked again to ensure that the shotgun was unloaded, then secured it inside the backpack with the stock jutting out the top, within easy reach. I placed my hand on the first rung of the ladder and Arsha shined the light obligingly.

  “Brant, what about you?” she said abruptly. “What do you miss the most from the old world?”

  I looked back. Her face was unreadable in the diffuse light that reflected from the walls of the vault.

  My first instinct was to reply “Zade”. I still thought about him a lot. For so long I’d been chased across the desert, believing that I was human – that, in the early days of Winter, I’d transplanted my mind into this synthetic body, that my true identity was that of a man of flesh and blood, a man who had a past. A job, a family, a son. Zade. But Arsha had revealed that those memories were implants, part of a fantasy I’d concocted to convince myself of things that were untrue. In reality there was no Zade, no life as a human. I knew that now. But those memories were difficult to shake. At times they still clung to me like the chill of winter in my bones. With effort, I could control them, keep myself from succumbing to their grip. Most days, I didn’t yearn for them to be real as I once did.

  I’d accepted who I was now. I was Brant, the synthetic, the one who had been entrusted with this great responsibility. It was at once both a burden and a gift. I was thankful each and every day that I had been chosen for it, thankful that I’d survived where so many others had perished.

  Despite all of that, sometimes it seemed as though Arsha and I had been trapped in a nightmare, and one day soon I’d wake to find that the world hadn’t been destroyed, that all of those people had never died. That there would be an easy road ahead on which for me to walk, and not this endless struggle where the future of the world hung on a knife edge.

  It was hard to be strong every minute of every day, like she was.

  “I don’t miss any of what’s behind, Arsha,” I lied. “I only look forward now.”

  7

  The broom scraped across the old carpet, fibrous strands pulling free from the pile and clinging to the bristles like long, ragged arms. Arsha drew it back and stamped the head vigorously, but they would not be dislodged.

  “This carpet is falling to bits,” she noted, upending the broom and tugging strands free with her fingers. I smiled from where I was scrubbing the wall with a damp cloth.

  “You better be careful or you’re gonna rip the whole thing up.”

  “Yeah.” She made an unhappy expression. “But I really want to get this dust out.”

  I looked about the bedroom, the first of two at Somerset we’d designated as nurseries, and decided that, contrary to her complaints, it was in a pretty decent state. The pale lemon walls were clean and intact. A heavily cushioned easy chair squatted in one corner, fat and wide like a sumo wrestler, and a solid wooden cot lay flush against the wall in the other, its powder-blue paintwork as neat as could be expected given its age. Dark grey drapes had been drawn apart at the windows, allowing a bright square of sunlight into the room along with a cool breeze. Outside, sunflowers swayed amidst the greenery of the garden under a cloudless blue sky.

  “I think you’ve done about as much as you can,” I said.

  “I’m just worried about the floor. What if there’s dust mites or something hiding in here?”
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  “Dust mites? Did they even survive the Winter?”

  She thought about that. “Y’know, they probably didn’t.”

  “So, no problem, then.”

  “I’m just being pedantic, I guess, but I have this real urge to make everything spotless.”

  “You’re nesting,” I told her. “That’s natural.” I gestured to the wall. “I’m doing it, too. We’re like a couple of clucky parents.”

  She laughed, wiping absently at grime on her nose. “What an odd thought.”

  I stopped and flipped the cloth idly between my hands. “Did you ever think about actually doing it? Having kids.”

  “Huh?” she said, befuddled. “I’m a clank. That doesn’t work.”

  “Yeah, but I mean… we were built to mimic humans in every way, right? Even down to their base emotions and fears, as well as their desires. So did you ever want children?”

  She went very quiet and looked down at her hands, twirling a carpet thread around her finger.

  “It sounds stupid but… yes. I did. A long time ago.” This was evidently a difficult memory for her to recall.

  “How did you deal with it?”

  She shrugged. “Well, what can you do? You have to accept it and move on. There’s no other option.”

  I grimaced. “It’s not fair.”

  “What?”

  “That we were made to desire things we could never have.”

  She looked up sharply. “Of course it isn’t fair. Life isn’t fair. Don’t you think it works exactly the same way for humans?”

  “I’m not sure it does, actually.”

  “This isn’t something that’s unique to synthetics, you know. Every human who ever lived felt the same way at one point or another. People were born blind and wished their whole lives for sight. Others wanted to be taller, or more beautiful. And yeah, people went through life wishing they could bear children but were never able to. That’s part of the human experience, isn’t it? For us to wish for things that we can’t have.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “In the end it doesn’t matter whether it’s blood inside of us or silicon. At some point we have to confront the fact that there are things we can never do. Things we can never have. For some people, it destroys them. For others, they come through it and learn something about themselves. It makes them stronger.”

  I thought back to the time when I’d witnessed exactly what she was describing. I thought of Max, lying alone in a deserted city, unable to escape until he’d crawled into the arms of death in the wasteland, and remembered how I’d buried him and told him I’d never forget him. Max had never come to terms with life after the Winter, with the things he’d lost.

  “You okay?” Arsha said, blowing away the cobwebs of the reverie in which I’d been enveloped.

  “Yeah, sorry. What you said took me back.” I waved my hand. “Old memories. No big deal.”

  “Didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “It’s fine. I need to remember. Like you said, I went through some tough times, but in the end I came out stronger.”

  We headed our separate ways after that, and for the next week we crossed paths only sporadically. I opted to spend my time predominantly at Somerset, taking care of the chores there, while Arsha visited the other plantation located at Cider Street. Both were situated in the northern suburbs, only a few minutes’ walk from each other. They were close enough to be handy, but adequately separated so that a fire or some other unforeseen threat would not be able to destroy them both in one hit. At times I also journeyed back to the workshop to check on the progress of the a-wombs. There was no change at this early stage, and I knew that there would be nothing to see, but I was still compelled to be present at least some of the time. When I was elsewhere I tried not to think about the embryos, even though they jostled and chafed constantly at the edge of my thoughts.

  There was plenty to do at Somerset. Still waiting for rain, I found myself carting water from the stream almost daily. Toward the end of the week I noticed that the heads of wheat in the front yard were hanging heavy with grain, tipping toward the earth. They looked about ready to harvest. Running my fingers across one of the heads, I strangled a few grains loose and tested them in my hand, clumps of chaff slipping through my fingers and fluttering to the earth like tiny butterflies. The grains were firm and crunchy.

  Yes. Time to harvest.

  I spent an hour or two cutting and binding sheaves of wheat from both the front and back yards, our entire crop at Somerset, then secured the sheaves upright against the wall of the garage, which we had converted to a kind of makeshift barn. I had to relocate some of the other junk we’d accumulated to make space – tools, buckets, planks of wood. Very soon we’d have to branch out into other garages along the street in order to increase our storage capacity. For now, the space was adequate if managed properly. The sheaves of wheat would sit here curing, safe from the elements until the time came to thresh the grain.

  Arsha passed by as I was cleaning up. She was carrying a bunch of flowers from the garden at Cider and I immediately recognised the significance.

  “You heading to the cemetery?” I called out from the garage.

  She gave me a little wave and made her way over. “Yeah. Thought I’d drop by on my way back to the lab.”

  It was a curious ritual she’d developed, frequently visiting the little cemetery that overlooked the city from a nearby hillside to lay the flowers on a grave. It was the place I’d found her when I’d first returned from my journey across the wasteland, and she’d been there for the same reason – to lay the flowers in remembrance, not of anyone in particular, she’d said, but of everything. Of all that we’d lost.

  “Some nice carnations,” I remarked.

  “Thanks.”

  I didn’t quite understand the significance of her treks up that hillside, but I figured it was just her way of coping with the horror of the world we found ourselves in, her way of reconciling herself with the bleakness of it all. God knows I’d faced my own obstacles. In fact, they’d come very close to destroying me. All in all, Arsha had coped far better than I, so who was I to criticise her methods?

  “I’m gonna finish up here and then I’ll probably see you at the lab,” I said.

  “Sure.” She turned and began to walk away.

  “Oh, and pay my respects to the dead too, okay?”

  She looked back at me curiously, and I wondered for a moment if I’d intruded on something personal, but she just nodded.

  “Okay. See you.”

  Heading into the back yard, I set to work in the vegetable garden, mulching and watering where required. I also plucked a ripe tomato that I’d had my eye on from the vine, cutting it in half at its equator to inspect the flesh. It was a good specimen. Opening the vertical cavities within, I gently squeezed out the jelly-like substance that contained the seeds and placed them inside a jar, along with a dribble of water, and left them on the corner of the garden in the sun. In a couple of days I’d be able to separate the seeds and, after allowing them to dry, store them for later planting. The flesh of the tomato was added back into the compost pile to be recycled into the garden. What a shame, I thought idly, that I couldn’t devour it myself and make use of the nutritional value of the fruit.

  In the distance, I could see the sun beginning to dip toward the spires of the city. There was a haze around again today and the air was redolent of smoke. Another fire was evidently smouldering somewhere out in the city or surrounds. The day was moving fast and I wanted to get back to the workshop before nightfall, so I finished my chores, cleaned up and got going.

  When I arrived at M-Corp, I could tell immediately that something was not right. Arsha had arrived after finishing up at the cemetery and now was fretting about inside the lab. As soon as I entered, a look of fury came across her face.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she shouted as I shrugged into my cleanroom suit. She strode toward me with such intent that I thought she might
clout me hard enough to knock me back through the doors of the lab.

  “Whoa, Arsha, what’s going on? I was just at Somerset–”

  “Not, that, the fluid!” she exclaimed, pointing back inside the lab. “The amniotic fluid.”

  “What about it?” I started forward, alarmed, still trying to get into the suit while Arsha hurried on ahead. She began tapping at the nearest touch panel.

  “You screwed it up, Brant, that’s what.”

  “Huh? What are you talking about?”

  “Look at this! The composition is all wrong.” She flicked angrily through several parameters on the screen. “The electrolytes are totally out of whack. I’m also seeing protein content here, as well as some carbohydrates. What were you thinking? These shouldn’t be present for another couple of months!”

  “Arsha,” I said defensively, “I followed the guidelines that we’d always used when M-Corp was in operation. Before the Winter. I can promise you that.”

  She glared at me and pushed past, gripping the pump at the end of the row in one hand and punching at buttons with the other.

  “My god, you might as well have pumped seawater in there, Brant.” She shook her head. “This is all wrong.”

  “I’m telling you, it’s a standard blend.”

  “Do me a favour, okay? Just stay away from my embryos.”

  I was shocked. “Arsha, come on, this is crazy. Calm down, will you?”

  “I’m serious, Brant. Don’t touch them. If you want to screw up your own embryos, that’s one thing, but you won’t be jeopardising mine.”

  I turned my back on her and walked to the last two a-wombs in line, over to where my unengineered embryos were sealed behind layers of translucent membrane. Reviewing the parameters again myself on the touch panels, I could see nothing untoward in the data.

  “This is nuts,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong here. I have no idea what you’re going on about.”